Like a black hole in the sky, visible only as the stars it passes in front of disappear, the shape spirals larger and closer. A feeling of existential dread falls over you as it approaches, along with a feeling of unfathomable distance shrinking at dizzying speed, as if the creature as plunging out of a deep pit suspended overhead with its far reaches among the stars themselves.

The circling shape dips out of site behind the trees for an instant and when it heaves itself back into the sky it is close enough that features can be made out. It is a gangly black humanoid figure suspended from vast bat-like wings. Needled talons spring from its fingers and the tip of its curiously pointed tail, and where its face should be is nothing but a black featureless mask.

The creature descends into the center of the circle and hangs in the air in front of Artemis, wings flapping lazily, its blank head thrust towards him as if peering or sniffing at him.

"A night gaunt!" squeals 7 Rabbit. "The Lord of the Great Abyss has sent one of his servants to observe your investiture! Oh, you are truly blessed!"

The night gaunt's tail begins to whip back and forth, faster and faster, and each time it pumps Artemis's robe begins to glow a little brighter, glimmering as with starlight.

Originally Posted by JoeNotCharles

Bob takes the healing infusion and hesitates with it at his lips. "Yer sure this won't hurt me?"

OOC

Bob will take the healing infusion on the first round of combat, so that it will last for the encounter.

As soon as Artemis approaches the body, he realizes that it is not a skeleton as he had thought. (Note: I never said they were skeletons!) The skin is drawn tight across the corpse's bones, but it has not decayed away: in fact, it looks unnaturally tough and leathery. Suddenly the body twists and lashes out with a claw-like hand towards Artemis's leg! He jumps back out of the way and three of the five corpses suddenly let out snarling moans and begin to rise to their feet!

Originally Posted by Someone

The ghouls' simple minds are easy to manipulate. Misdirecting their hunger into desire of keeping all the prey for himself, Shale forces one of them jump backwards and attack savagely the remaining undead.

As her competence in hiding could be clearly overmatched at this time by the large bug on the wall, from within the coils of the sticky line, Lilli just manages to wave her hand roughly towards the large insect she can still just see; her dweomercraft illuminates the area around it with her own magical light spell.

She follows this cantrip up with a probing distraction of slightly more power; the creature’s senses are assailed with a brief repeating pattern of bursting stars that apparently threaten to overwhelm the insect’s eye clusters.

Latterly, she flicks the remnants of the line away. It must have worked lose by her motion and the kicking of her feet as she reacted to the insect's attack.

“Owww, wait...I think I’ve got most of this stingy sticky stuff off. At least it’s not in the face.”

Originally Posted by Cute-Hydra

Karma steps back putting as much distance between him and the ghoul flesh seeker, "BURN UNDEAD ABOMINATION" KARMA CRIES unleashing a flaming bolt of holy energy at the culmination of his prayer of smiting! The sacred flame burns into the ghoul and burning into the insects surrounding Artemis.

Originally Posted by JoeNotCharles

A flock of bats startles and flaps off down the tunnel, squeaking madly. You scramble after them. The tunnel twists and turns, and you pass numerous side passages. Sometimes the bats dart into natural tunnels or through small holes in the rock that all but Lilli must force themselves through. At other times they enter wide galleries laid with cart tracks, whose rock faces bear the marks of pick and shovel. Most of the times the flock is out of sight in the darkness, but you follow the sound of wings. Eventually even that fades, and you follow fresh droppings. Usually the path leads clearly upwards, but occasionally you are led down a side tunnel that seems to wind back the way you came. Invariably, just as you are about to give up, the tunnel twists and heads upwards once again.

But soon you find yourself in a labyrinth of caves whose floor is slick with guano, with no way to tell which is freshest. You try a few exits by guess, but now the caves have turned on you, and every path which seems that it should lead up and out soon levels out and plunges steeply into the earth.

And now that you have no guide to follow, the caves have become far more confusing. Sometimes on entering a tunnel it will abruptly slant in an unexpected direction, or an opening that looked too small to enter will prove to be huge on approach - or vice versa. At last you turn into a dead end, retrace your steps - you are certain you retraced them exactly! - and find yourself in a different place than you were before. Either something in here is clouding your sense of direction, or the caves themselves are shifting behind you!

You find yourself at the foot of a great cavern, its walls honeycombed with tunnels. A rail track crosses the cavern floor, connecting a wide tunnel sloping up in one wall with an equally wide tunnel sloping downward in the other. Part of the wall has collapsed into a scree of rubble, and you can see another hole near the top, but climbing the scree to get to it looks tricky. The other tunnels are featureless clones of the maze you've been navigating since you lost track of the bats.

Originally Posted by FourMonos

Artemis starts to see the worry in the eyes of his companions. Heck, poor Bob is near rigid with fright. Now the twisting tunnels of the caverns are stymieing the group at every turn. There is only one thing left to do...

"Chin up there, Bob. I can see the worry building. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little worried, too. Everyone here is worried."

He turns and faces his companions, volume building, "But this isn't the moment to pause. To falter. To second guess ourselves. What we accomplish here... tonight... this is the stuff that bards make into tales. ...Nay, legends! This here situation, it is not something to shy away from. Not something to worry. Not something to fear!"

"This is our moment to overcome! We need to embrace this! To run into the next room grinning at what is to come next! We aren't going to fail! The group of us, together, we are going to succeed. We will overcome these pesky critters, these turning tunnels. This will be the most exciting night of your life! This is the night, Bob, that you can tell your kids that you looked the devil in the face and spit in his eye! Are you with me!"

And Artemis Pact continues to be epic! (Excuse me for quoting myself, but I think it's justified because it was the players that set up the situation...)

Originally Posted by CaBaNa

The orb in Gil's hand flashes brightly, and the wizard leaves a wake across the water as he moves adjacent to Artemis. His shadowy form wilts, and tries to raise both arms, one failing.

It HURTS, put it back, put it back, the scholar holds his shoulder like hugging it will fix the problem. The chemical reaction in the wizards body was quick, and angry. Bursting with an inhuman growl, Gil points his good arm toward the Umber Hulk, his orb flashes again.

A hand of force appears beside Gil, reaching into a pocket, it pulls out a pint-sized glass vial. The hand floats into the air, high above the Umber Hulk, and releases the vial to fall over it's hard carapace.

Almost at the same instant the vial contacts the shell, Gil releases a small fireball that hurtles toward the giant beast. Moments later the area is engulfed in a scorching explosion, and Gil becomes solid again. Though he still clutches at his arm and shoulder desperately.

interesting anecdote about oil and water

A pint of oil can produce a slick of approximately one acre on the surface of water source

Originally Posted by FourMonos

Artemis stands slack jawed.

"Gil," he whispers, "Remind me later to keep on your good side."

Originally Posted by Cute-Hydra

Karma as he lay on the floor wondered what had gone wrong, insight had failed him the beast was a mindless crazed brute and his superior insight hadn't stopped it. Then he realised as the true insight flooded into his mind clearly divine insight at it's best, that the intelligence of how to act does not replace action itself.

Mobilising his thoughts, he anticipated the umber hulks crude attempts to claw him as he got close. He recited a prayer of healing to insulate him from the monsters attacks, at worst he would at least stop the beast from killing Gil...

He moved quickly towards the beast using a rock pile as temporary cover taking the anticipated claws in his stride shutting the pain down in his mind ignoring it, as he brought his trademark glowing fist of light to bare bringing the full momentum of the charge into the umber hulk knocking it cleanly to the floor.

Originally Posted by JoeNotCharles

As the hulk whirls in the water, clawing at the grubs it thinks are squirming back into its carapace, it is abruptly hit by a WHOOF of fire, igniting the oil slick that's appeared at its feet. A sheet of flame springs up around it and its maddened, maddening eyes whirl in pain and terror.

Suddenly Karma appears beside it and unleashes a mighty punch into the center of its chest, knocking it off its feet, deeper into the flame. A savage part of the creature's mind reacts and it claws at him even as it is falling, but he easily dodges.

The hulk thrashes onto its stomach, the edges of its carapace blackening. It pulls itself by its arms through the shallow water, out of the floating fire. Its breathing is ragged and it nearly collapses, but it pulls itself to its knees to stare at the attackers standing on land with hatred in its whirling, tormented eyes. Artemis and Gil, directly in front of it, suddenly feel all its pain, rage and madness flood through their minds - and then the invasion is gone. The beast slumps forward into the water. It twitches feebly, trying to rise.

Can they kill it next turn, or will it get to its feet and massacre poor Gil, who has 1 hit point left and just angered it by lighting it on fire?

I was digging into the Beyond the Rerisen Tower thread for skill challenge stuff for H.M. and saw this again.

This is Mewness' character's summary of the second half of the adventure for an NPC - a great summary of one of the most fun adventures I've ever run for one of the best groups I've ever played with!

Originally Posted by Mewness

Scarmiglione asks politely for something hot to drink, and upon being provided with a large cup of tea, drinks it in his birdlike manner, sticking his beak in and then tilting his head sharply back so that the liquid trickles down his throat.

“After leaving you at the tower, we traveled into the mountains,” he begins softly, although his voice carries well enough for everyone to hear. “We were quickly surrounded by a strange, unnaturally cold mist, and had trouble finding our way. We could hear the dead pursuing us, but we were not able to avoid them.... They came upon us very suddenly, almost out of nowhere: more of those unpleasant flying globules, and creatures that, despite their enormous size, seemed to vanish into the mist without effort. I confess I do not know how we survived—those of us who did. Salgyn and Yishim were struck down and turned into walking dead, like your confederates”—he nods at a militia man—“and I was struck down myself. When I came awake again, I saw those little flying things—so many of them! They had drained us all, and their numbers grew and grew—but they were channeling their power, trying to cause one of the large creatures to rise again, and it was somehow beyond them: one by one they faded, spent.” Scarmiglione shakes his head gently, still bemused by the events he is relating. “Those of us still standing tried to capture the things that Salgyn and Yishim had become. We could not bring ourselves to destroy them, though more dead were coming, and there was little time. The body of Salgyn escaped us, and we struggled on with Yishim. I could hardly walk. I was sure the end was near—I had a restorative concoction in my bag, but I could not swallow, could not drink it.

“You will doubt the next part of the story, perhaps—with good reason, as I doubt it myself. I was, as I say, barely conscious. Kaz said that he could see a golden light, and one way or another, we abandoned our former course and made our way towards it. The path led us through a narrow ravine, and our pursuers were gaining on us, exhausted as we were, and dragging a walking corpse who fought us at every step—in the light of dawn, the picture is an amusing one, no?” Scarmiglione chuckles. “I vaguely remember singing the Song for the Dead to him—to it, rather—in an attempt to calm it down. Whether I did or not, whether or not it worked, I cannot precisely recollect. Perhaps I dreamed it. It is a famous aria—you have heard it, not doubt.” And he sings a good part of it, briefly filling the room with the poignant, haunting tune, before breaking the mood with a sudden full-throated laugh at the idea of himself singing to amuse a zombie.

“But to continue: the dead were catching up. We passed through an especially narrow bottleneck, and Fredrock declared he would stay and defend it while the rest of us escaped. As to whether any of us tried to dissuade him I cannot say. In any case we left him behind. Then our progress was blocked by a barrier of golden light.” He fishes around in his pockets for the statuette of the goddess. “But the barrier seemed to recognize this little bauble I had found, and we were admitted into a sort of grotto, with a glowing golden pool. You will correct me if I am wrong,” he says, turning to his companions, “for I do not trust my own recollections. A woman’s voice spoke—I believe it was the little statue speaking. She offered to save Fredrock’s life in exchange for one of our lives. Well, I cannot say what happened, exactly. Somehow Fredrock’s life was saved, and we were all alive ourselves at the end of it. Even Yishim was restored to life. Rather than taking one person’s life, it appears that she took a little something from each of us.” One of his hands goes unconsciously to the golden feathers at his throat and picks at them.

“I should like to identify our benefactor, but she would not reveal her name. She mentioned something of history of the area. There was once a city here, inhabited by people she referred to as the Hungerers; thoroughly unpleasant folk apparently, practitioners of necromancy and worshipers of the raven gods—the very ones causing all the trouble here. They had taken over the mind of a powerful sorceress, the very one who had been sending the dead to attack us.

“Well. We were much refreshed after spending some time in the golden grotto—it is no exaggeration to say that we had been brought back from the brink of death—and so we continued up to the plateau, where we did indeed find the ruins of a city. I cannot accurately describe it; the entire plateau was shrouded in that same clammy mist.... The dead were there in vast numbers, but we eluded them—by quite a clever bit of deception, really. I was leading some of them off and happened upon an old library, and had the good fortune to see some maps of the place, so getting through the city proved not at all difficult.

“Our information suggested that the center of the raven gods’ power was in a vast underground labyrinth. We encountered more dead on our way through. Truly hideous, creatures that it would hardly be decent to describe, not to mention the mushrooms that seemed to move in response to spilled blood—well, it does not bear talking of, does it? One cannot forget such things too quickly. I don’t know how long it took us to get through the labyrinth—it is truly vast, and we saw only a fraction of it—but after many ascents and descents, and what seemed to be an endless series of tunnels, we found the main temple.

“This was a large hall, decorated with images of the raven gods, and your friends were there—I mean you and your friend Livia, of course,” he says, glancing at Cale. “But they were most hideously changed. And there was a third person, the sorceress, the one who had been tormenting us all along. And she spoke to us, in two voices at once, so it seems to me—one voice the servant of the raven gods, taunting us, and the other the person she had been before, pleading in our minds.... Because of her, we knew how to destroy them—we had to break the statues of the gods and disrupt the magic that would bring them back.

“You and Livia”—he again addresses Cale—“were controlled by the ravens and fought us. Every time we killed you, the statues brought you back. When the statues were destroyed, you became your human selves again—but you both had the terrible wounds that we had inflicted. Livia was so badly injured that she could not survive the sorceress’s attack.” Scarmiglione drains his cup and pours himself some more. “This is marvelous; the very thing,” he comments—rather unfeelingly, given that he is in the middle of relating the circumstances of Livia’s death.

“All that remained was to disrupt the magic and destroy the sorceress—as she herself had requested. I cannot say it was a simple matter. I don’t know the first thing about magical rituals, and frankly, I should not have supposed that I knew much about killing undead sorceresses, either. Fortunately, there are some among us with expertise in these delicate matters. It is done, and, fortune willing, over with.”

Since I can't give Someone any more XP right now, instead I will immortalize his words in the Peanut Gallery:

Originally Posted by Someone (paraphrased)

Shale casts Dimensional Vortex to throw the gargoyles into the teleporter.

Originally Posted by JoeNotCharles

One of the two gargoyles is whirled through Shale's vortex into an even larger vortex. It beats its wings, trying in futility to gain purchase in the air that is shifting around it, but suddenly is sucked into what seems like a long tunnel or well into nowhere.

It pops back into existance right where it started from. The stress of the tunnel has taken its toll, though, and its rocky skin is covered with cracks and chips. As it "falls" from the tunnel, it strikes the surface of the ledge and shatters.

Originally Posted by Someone

Ah, good. I was considering the possibility that warping space so close to already warped space could make the whole cavern explode. I'm glad it's not the case.

Nothing to do with roleplaying, but I'd like to submit this turn as a very fine example of Invisible Castle's being Invisible Castle (perhaps the finest I've seen since the near-TPK in Beyond the Rerisen Tower when the party was saved by all of Iron Sky's minions killing themselves with terrible die rolls).

Note that IC does not favor either side here: I think it hates both me and my players and just wants the fight to be as long and grindy as possible. The masterful touch is the critical hit right at the end that does piddly damage but blinds the party's only striker.

The Invisible Castle has been rather enjoying it, I'm sure. What with the minions that blind on a crit getting multiple crits, while making sure that whenever the Striker used an encounter or daily power, it handed out a natural 1. I rather think if I could roll not-ones, this encounter would be largely over by now.

Noriaki lets Kane's remarks flow off of him. As he walks off, Noriaki whispers softly in Tsugo. "I always knew these otherlanders did things strangely, but to find one so off base is still off putting, after all these months." He shakes his head, and his smile returns. "Give me a moment to prepare, and we'll get started."

Noriaki scrounges around the campsite for a minute, taking a spare cup from two of the Fitzpatricks. He casts around for paper, before remembering the logbook. Flipping to the back, where there are empty pages left, he rips a few of them out. He pokes through the fire, drawing out a half burnt stick. Finally, he seems to have what he seeks.

He lays out the pages on a smooth surface and uses the charred edge of the stick to write on them in Tsugo. His strokes are smooth and precise, reminding one slightly of sword strokes. His calligraphy is exquisite, though even the native speakers among the onlookers have to read them twice, the forms of the glyphs are so old. He sticks three on the side of the shelter, above his head. On top, one reads "Master". Below that, two more read "Clan" and "Storm". In front of himself he lays three more pieces. One reads "Vassal". Two more each read "Aspirant". He indicates that Ishirou should kneel upon the two "Aspirant" papers, and goes to the stream to fill the cup.

Returning to his place at the side of the shelter, Noriaki places Ishirou's katana lengthwise on the ground between them, unsheathed. He holds the cup in one hand, and runs the index finger of his other hand around the rim at a slow, even pace. As he does, he begins a low chant, the words always seeming just a little too soft and too quickly spoken to be heard. As he does, a small breeze picks up again, and begins to play lightly with Ishirou's hair and robes, though it leaves the papers alone, curiously. A small electrical current begins to visibly course around the edge of the cup, following Noriaki's finger.

Abruptly, Noriaki's chant stops. He dips a finger in the water, and wipes it along the blade of Ishirou's katana. The current flashes playfully along the blade, feint enough one could convince oneself it wasn't even there. He dips again and looks at Ishirou, speaking in loud, authoritative Tsugo. "You are summoned here by Matsumoto Noriaki, trueborn son of the House of Storms, to serve that House, in their name. The class you once held is washed away." he draws his finger from the water, and drips a few drops on Ishirou's head. "The name you once held is washed away. Take your sword, Vassal of the House of Storms. Rise, as Matsumoto Ishirou."

After Ishirou rises, Noriaki reaches into his satchel and pulls out his old silk sash, it's vibrant blue catching the morning light. He presents it to Ishirou. "I don't have a full raiment to give you, at this time. For now, wear this, and we will get you outfitted as soon as we can.'